B&S ON SUNDAYS (7)

From wiki:-

“I’m Waking Up to Us” is a song by Belle & Sebastian, released as a single/EP on Jeepster in 2001. The track saw the band work with another producer besides usual collaborator Tony Doogan for the first time – Mike Hurst, former member of The Springfields and producer of Petula Clark and Cat Stevens.

The front cover features band member Sarah Martin and a beagle.

The all music review:-

The worry was that Belle & Sebastian had settled into a comfortable, premature middle age — treading water in their tried and true, admittedly pleasant formula but slowly relinquishing their potential to greatly move us. That notion is hereby dispelled, nay, smashed to smithereens by this wonderful piece of art.

“I’m Waking Up to Us” is the matter that striking pop is made up of, like a golden Bacharach staple, where sharp acoustic guitars, a chiming lead, supple bass, resonant background violins, agreeable piano, and a trio of bassoon, oboe, and flute cameos combine to supply the perfect tuneful four-minute pop song. Having drawn us in like sorcerers to this lush, tantalizing, but precarious concoction, Stuart Murdoch delivers one of his most sterling and memorable vocal performances, perfectly timed to correspond to an equally accomplished set of direct-feeling words. He was always a vigorous poet, but he outdoes even himself here, impressively turning a superb firsthand soul-search into regretful acidity. This is the sort of rich lyrical complexity, with the unfolding hook of narrative like a great film, that top shelf ’60s pop once trafficked in — but no longer cares a rats ass to deliver.

And it doesn’t stop there, on the two other non-LP B-sides. “I Love My Car” is a sublime one-two quarter-note rhythm step meeting both a playful feel, and an equally frilly, intoxicated lyric highlighted by a clever Beach Boys tribute. Then, as a fitting closer, “Marx and Engels” is another lithe piano-led pretty-gem, the kind that made this U.K. collective cult-famous. It’s yet three more minutes of pure bliss, punctuated by a sumptuous turn on the ivories at the close. You’ll never see this on an LP, but that just makes it more of a must purchase.

The band was augmented on the lead song by twelve violins, three violas, a bassoon, an oboe and a flute, while I Love My Car has a jazz/skiffle band on board with banjo, trumpet, trombone, clarinet and sousaphone all put to good use. The end result is one of the best of their singles/EPs and one which was deserving of a much higher chart position than #39.

I’m Waking Up To Us is surely one of the nastiest lyrics of all time. Stuart Murdoch and Isobel Campbell‘s romantic relationship had run its course although she was still an essential part of the band. So he pens a song about things not working out and gets the subject matter of the song to play on it. It was an act of real cruelty and I’m sure Isobel was pretty humiliated by it all.

You could even extend it to the b-side where the lyric talks of loving cars, cats and dogs but not the human being in the song……

I suppose Isobel got her revenge the following year by quitting the band in the middle of an important tour of the USA and putting the frontman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.